Monday, July 11, 2016

Important Announcement: International Conference on Holobionts

Over the last few years, the terms holobiont and hologenome have received heightened attention, leading to a high-water mark of the 1st dedicated conference on the topic next year at the Paris Natural History Museum (see below). The meeting will be an important event for the community in order to set goals and achieve unity, understanding, and needs for the future. I think it will also be an opportunity to resolve misuses of the terms and associated concepts (Getting the Hologenome Concept Right, mSystems). Many factors have played a part in raising the profile of these terms and concepts including our work and others. Due to an existing heavy travel schedule, work-life balance, and teaching, I declined the invitation to speak at this conference and recommended several young scientists. I heartily endorse this conference and encourage keeping a close eye on developments that come from it. While it is the 1st conference dedicated to the topic, many other conference symposiums and workshops on the topic are brewing or have already taken place. There will hopefully be a 2nd International Conference on Holobionts in the future.

International Conference on Holobionts,
Paris (Natural History National Museum), April 19-21, 2017
It is becoming increasingly clear that the development, nutrition, physiology and
health of most organisms are influenced by the complex microbial communities they host,
hereby shaping their ecology and evolution. Biology is indeed undergoing a paradigm shift,
where individual phenotypes are seen as a result of the combined expression of the host and
associated microbe genomes, leading to the popularization of the holobiont concept (the
host and its microbiota) and the hologenome (the collective genomes of a holobiont).
Ecological and technical advances, especially in next generation sequencing technologies,
have greatly contributed to this conceptual shift, thereby revealing the diversity and roles of
the microbes hosted by diverse organisms, from people and plants, to sponges and insects.
The scientific community has now recognized that the host organisms cannot be studied
without taking resident microbiomes into account, making holobiont research imperative
across numerous fields of the life and medical sciences.
The objective of the International Conference on Holobionts, Paris 2017 is to, for the
first time, bring scientists together who are interested in holobiont systems and their study.
This conference will highlight major advances in defining the key roles of host-borne
microbiota in the ecology and evolution of higher organisms and the potential implications
for human health, food production and ecosystem functioning. In addition, the conference
will offer a platform for debate related to the definition, assembly and evolution of
holobionts. By bringing a range of holobiont researchers together, the International
Conference on Holobionts seeks to help consolidate the field, facilitate exchange of
knowledge across systems and approaches and stimulate further developments in this
emerging discipline.
Scientific program
This conference will address the following topics:

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Dr. Seth R. Bordenstein is
an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences and Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, lab home page. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and held a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Research Council at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. His laboratory studies evolutionary biology, microbiology, and virology, and he is most well known for his work on the microbiome, symbiosis, speciation and antibiotic discovery. Dr. Bordenstein is the founding director of the worldwide, project-based, HHMI science program called Discover the Microbes Within! The Wolbachia Project (main website & facebook page). His research and science education activities have been highlighted in various popular science media including a documentary on bacterial symbiosis, the New York Times, National Geographic, Discover Magazine, PBS, Scientific American, BBC Radio, among others. Twitter: @Symbionticism.